


Lies We Forgive

by Lady_in_Red



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst and Feels, Beginnings, Canon Compliant, F/M, Ficlet, Forgiveness, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 10:57:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3526685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_in_Red/pseuds/Lady_in_Red
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Jaime heard Brienne laugh, they were traveling along a narrow track somewhere in the Riverlands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Jaime heard Brienne laugh, they were traveling along a narrow track somewhere in the Riverlands. Their horses plodded dutifully through the snow, the path marked only by a wider gap between the thickly-burdened trees. 

The snow sparkled in the bright morning sun, an unbroken blanket of white stretching out before him. If anyone had come this way since the blizzard began two days earlier, there was no sign of them now. Jaime and Brienne’s horses’ hooves compacting the snow and an occasional soft thump in the distance were the only sounds. 

Jaime squinted into the glare, trying in vain to find any landmark he recognized. The snow was disorienting. Everything looked different, and he’d lost track of how far they had come, how soon they might find an inn. 

They had waited out the storm alone in an abandoned barn. Brienne had spent the first day sobbing over her supposed failures: an injured squire, a hanged hedge knight, and the horror that had once been Lady Catelyn Stark. The boy’s leg would mend, but Brienne had had no choice but to leave him at the inn at the crossroads. Jaime had his own list of failures, the faces that plagued his dreams. He could have told Brienne that she would learn to bear her guilt, but she would take that hard truth for a lie.

On the second day they’d spent huddled in the drafty barn, Brienne had done nothing but beg Jaime’s forgiveness. He'd had enough of her tears and offers to return his sword, refused to listen and turned his back on her. 

Jaime understood why Brienne had lied, but it still rankled. He needed a hot meal, a soft bed, and a few hours rest without the wench's regret and shame weighing on him. Jaime would forgive her in time. He could not yet say if he would ever trust her again.

“Jaime!” Brienne called out.

He looked back toward her just as a cold, wet blanket dropped on him. 

His horse startled and bucked, tossing Jaime unceremoniously into a snowbank. The cold seared his lungs, a shock like hitting the water when Jaime had jumped from the cliffs of Casterly Rock as a boy. 

Icy fingers worked their way under his cloak, into his boots, under his glove. Jaime scarcely had time to start clawing at the snow before he was grabbed by his arm and hauled up.  

Brienne loomed over him, her wild blonde hair a brilliant halo around her concerned face. “Are you alright?” 

Jaime nodded, roughly brushing snow off his jerkin. His cloak and breeches were thickly crusted in heavy, wet snow. Peering around the bulk of her, Jaime could see a large pile of snow in the middle of the path. It must have fallen directly on him. 

“I tried to warn you,” she said, still watching him anxiously.

“Perhaps  _ duck  _ might have been of more use,” Jaime grumbled. His stump was worse than useless, collecting snow rather than removing it, and he could feel snow melting in his hair, dripping under his collar and down his back. He would be miserably cold today if he didn’t get dry quickly.

“It happened so fast,” Brienne protested. “And then you just tipped over.” A smile briefly twisted her broad mouth. 

“I’m sure it was terribly amusing, wench, but your heroics with the Brotherhood will be for naught if I freeze to death.”

Brienne grasped his meaning and unfastened his sodden cloak. The heavy wool would be no use to him until it was dry. Her bright blue eyes checked him over again as Jaime scrubbed the snow from his breeches with frigid fingers.

Brienne’s free hand darted out to clumsily brush snow from Jaime’s shoulder. He ignored her, and her next swipe succeeded only in pushing snow onto his unprotected neck, making Jaime yelp. 

A slight rustling and a crack of branches above made Jaime look up—just as another load of snow dropped onto them both. 

Brienne shrieked, a high, girlish sound utterly at odds with the sturdy wench before him. 

Jaime cursed loudly, blinking through snow-covered lashes. Fuck this miserable winter. It was never this cold at Casterly Rock, and certainly not in King’s Landing. 

At least the wench looked just as ridiculous as he surely did. Brienne’s hair, cloak, and chainmail were all laden with wet snow. She scrubbed the snow furiously from her hair, making it stand up in wet spikes. 

And then she laughed. Not the practiced, tittering laugh of the silly young maidens at court. Her laugh was loud and honest and unexpected.

Jaime couldn’t help but laugh too. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

The last time Jaime heard her laugh, Brienne was lying again, but this lie was easy to forgive. 

“We’ll take a lunch up to the falls,” she said softly.

“Hmm?” Jaime lay dozing in her arms. Her heart beat strong and steady under his ear.

“On your nameday.” He could feel Brienne’s voice rumbling through her chest. “We can ride up for the day, swim and have lunch, just the two of us, like we used to.”

“Brienne,” Jaime started to protest, but stopped himself. What was the harm? She was only lying to herself. 

Jaime hadn’t been strong enough to ride, much less swim, in some time. He wasn’t sure how long exactly. The milk of the poppy made the days blur together. The sun rose and set, the maester bustled in and out of their chamber. 

Through it all, Brienne never left his side. Her eyes were shadowed, her face drawn, but she was still just as stubborn as ever. The boys—men now, but Jaime had never stopped thinking of them as boys—visited him most days. Jaime suspected they worried just as much about their mother as they did about him. 

Others had come too: Pod, Tyrion, Tommen. Even Myrcella, grown so beautiful that Jaime had thought for a moment that the Stranger had come to him in Cersei’s guise, until she’d turned and revealed her scars. 

“I’ll ask the cook to make those nut sweets you liked so much in Pentos, the ones dripping with honey. We can take some ham, cheese, cider, and sweet oranges, too. Whatever you like." Brienne’s voice was rich and sweet, flowing over him, through him. She idly stroked his hair, no longer gold but silver.

Pentos. Jaime remembered sucking the honey from her fingers when she’d offered him a small pastry. He turned his head, kissed the inside of Brienne’s wrist. 

“Flowers,” Jaime suggested, thinking of their hideaway at the falls, just far enough from home to avoid prying eyes.

“Flowers?” Brienne sounded puzzled. 

Had she forgotten? “In your hair.”

“Oh.” Then she laughed. 

That sound was a balm, soothing his tired old bones, the constant ache in his chest. Jaime loved her laugh, had gone to great lengths to tease it out of her over the years.  

Once he'd even woven a crown of flowers into Brienne's hair, turned her into the maiden in a song. Spring had come to Tarth, tall grasses and a riot of wildflowers in the meadows. They’d gone swimming in their favorite pool, where the water was cool and clear, falling from a chain of cascading waterfalls. Afterward they’d eaten cheese and ripe berries, drunk their fill of summerwine and each other, and Brienne had fallen asleep nude and sated and sun-kissed. 

While she'd slept, Jaime had picked some of the small blue flowers that grew all around the pool and tucked them into her flaxen hair. She’d been so annoyed with him when she'd woken, but later Jaime had found a few of the blossoms pressed into one of her books.

“I will wear every flower on this island if you want me to,” Brienne promised, her voice trembling, and gently kissed his brow. 

Jaime closed his eyes, letting himself bask in the warmth of her, the rise and fall of her breath, and dreamed of spring.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Miss_M for looking this over.


End file.
